I understand that air attacks on airfields have been reduced from the high levels ...but it now looks to me a little to much...i am using the lastest beta doing a fully manual attacks 2,700 destroyed picking my targets a bit light on i think...many large air strikes did not hit a thing! also i found the russian flak to be to FAR strong for this time in the war in a surprize attack turn!

Tigercub

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You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life

There are numerous serious flaws in the air war portion of this game. The Germans can't kill enough planes in the fisrt two turns because the bombing percentage limits the number of times the bombers can fly. They did this to stop hundreds of obsolete Soviet planes from overwhelming all the fighters and pounding the German airfields 30+ times a turn and eventually resting air superiority by the end of 1941. This may be the only way they have of addressing the problem and it isn't working. There is also a historical discrepency over how many many planes the Lufftwaffe destroyed on the ground in the first two weeks of the campaign. To my mind it was somewhere around 10,000 which is in no way possible in the this game. Turn two and all the Soviet planes leave the battlefield and long before they should be the Soviets are a menace in the air. This is the biggest problem by far with this game. I hope they find a way to fix it before the money runs out and they move on to the newest game. There is too much more to go into. Safe to say it's a mess.

Is that 2700 from airfield attacks alone, or 2700 for the entire turn? I know Wikipedia quotes the Germans claimed 3100 Soviet aircraft destroyed (all reasons) in the first 3 days (the first turn is 4 days), and lists a Soviet source as 3900. IIRC some in our dev staff have said these numbers are in fact high. When we were seeing 5000+ Soviet aircraft lost on the first turn we thought this was too high. We knew we were lowering the totals by the most recent changes, but my understanding from Gary was that it was not a huge reduction and was putting things more in line with where they probably should have been. IIRC the Germans lost between 100 and 200 aircraft during the first turn. You have to look at the first turn as a whole, not just the airfield attacks, so I'm curious what kind of complete first turn results you are seeing. Part of the difficulty here is comparing what the AI will do versus what a human player can do. Of course, the more one puts against airfields, the less available for ground support on turn 1.

After the 1.5 patch I started a game against the computer with no FOW. I could squeeze around 4,000 kills on turn one The latest patch should reduce this even further if I understand what it does correctly. As far as German losses on the first day, they sound way high. The sources will vary though depending on whether the sources are Soviet or German. I read one source that said somehing like 35 German first day losses and that their intial estimates on damage inflicted were way low when they over-ran those airfields. It's the sheer number of Soviet aircraft and the air to air routines, including flak, that still seem off. In my little game, I'm up to July 42' and I have never seen a night fighter take off let alone shoot anything down. As it is now the Germans will lose control of the air much earlier than they should. Cooperation between axis minor airforces would be nice to see also.

That's first turn German losses of 100 to 200, not first day. Yes, there's some reduction with the recent patch, but Gary's tests showed that it wasn't all that much less than it had been before (at least due to the reduction in number of airfield attacks).

As far as German losses on the first day, they sound way high. The sources will vary though depending on whether the sources are Soviet or German. I read one source that said somehing like 35 German first day losses and that their intial estimates on damage inflicted were way low when they over-ran those airfields.

In game we speak about 4 day period. German satellites also counted towards the totals. Knowing that 1st turn Axis loses doesn't look too high and Soviet too low. In fact many planes destroyed in first week are not even present in the game - old training (or written off) aircraft. Another aspect that big portion of Soviet planes were destroyed by "panzerwaffe", who made all non-permanent losses as permanent.

Currently in the game it is possible to destroy more, but it is also cost more. In general, imho, players put too big emphasis in on the airfield attacks.

quote:

After the 1.5 patch I started a game against the computer with no FOW.

Before 1.05.53 there was a CAP bug which made possible to scramble huge CAPs, thus screwing the results.

You shouldn't count all the losses for various reasons and the different damage states together. Only damage of 60% and above counts as write-off (total loss), everything else is repairable. It gets even less if you leave out the losses not related to enemy action like take-off or landing accidents. If the numbers given on this site are correct, I count 61 aircraft attributed to enemy action and 17 without enemy action.

I'm well aware of the 1.5 bug, it destroyed an otherwise winable 2v2 game of mine. As the Soviets were bombing airfields 30+ a turn and the Soviet airforce withdrew completely on turn two. They had air superiority in Dec 1941. I do continue to wonder why the Romanian air command is taking control of an all German airdrop or why if German, Italian and Romanian troops are conducting a joint attack only one of the air forces gets involved. Flak remains un-allocatable. When displacing airfields it doesn't appear that all damaged aircraft are destroyed either. Continual displacement during a turn keeps resulting in additional casualties... In any case, as it is now, the air war portion will lead to an early transfer of air superiority to the Soviets, much earlier than historicallly took place. It appears as though the code itself is preventing a comprehensive fix.

I am now happy with whats going on in the germans attacks on the airfields after more testing, i was able to inprove my attacks and pushed the russian losses up to 3,600 odd planes....german losses 160...

i think this strikes a good balance in the game ...so far...but its early days in my game...

Tigercub

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You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life

I'm well aware of the 1.5 bug, it destroyed an otherwise winable 2v2 game of mine

Sorry, I just don't see how it can destroy any game. WITE is so much ground centric.

Well, a few months back, (two patches), I brought up the bombing of airfields problem as Gewehr43. Also the problem with the Soviets intercepting axis aircraft 15 hexes behind the lines on a one hex (10 miles) away supply drop, among other problems with the air war. The little thing about seven Russian fihgters intercepting and shooting down 100 JU52's and losing nine fighters! While the JU52's were protected by seventy-nine Me-109's. I sent the saved games to you guys and it was admitted that with 200 fighters left the Luftwaffe was spent, caused from air attacks on airfields with useless flak, by hordes of Soviet biplanes. This was an ongoing discussion between me, you and the designers (even Gary) and the next two patches attempted to fix some of the more obvious problems and partially succceded. If you would like to see those saved games again I can upload them to you to refresh your memories. Remember me losing 109 JU-88's on the ground to 30+ airfield attacks? An entire KG. My game was played in part before the 1.5 patch. It was really bad before that. I had taken Leningrad, Kharkov and was cleaning up the Donets and Don basins. The game became unplayable because of the numbers of Russian planes that escaped on turn two and the endless airfield attacks and I had to resign because of the air situation. You guys called it a "gamey" tactic but the game permitted it. I've been wargaming this campaign for 40 years, I know the feel of when the Soviets should be able to challenge the Luftwaffe. This present situation isn't resolved. Fixing the problems may be a code related restriction. I get that, but don't say "Sorry, I just don't see how it can destroy any game." That's nonsense. Mine was. Saved game available upon request to anyone.

There are numerous serious flaws in the air war portion of this game. The Germans can't kill enough planes in the fisrt two turns because the bombing percentage limits the number of times the bombers can fly. They did this to stop hundreds of obsolete Soviet planes from overwhelming all the fighters and pounding the German airfields 30+ times a turn and eventually resting air superiority by the end of 1941. This may be the only way they have of addressing the problem and it isn't working. There is also a historical discrepency over how many many planes the Lufftwaffe destroyed on the ground in the first two weeks of the campaign. To my mind it was somewhere around 10,000 which is in no way possible in the this game. Turn two and all the Soviet planes leave the battlefield and long before they should be the Soviets are a menace in the air. This is the biggest problem by far with this game. I hope they find a way to fix it before the money runs out and they move on to the newest game. There is too much more to go into. Safe to say it's a mess.

10,000 planes sounds high. Maybe there were 10k losses for the Soviets for the first month or two, including losses in the air and damaged planes that were destroyed by the Sovs themselves ( as the Germans threatened to overrun an airfield ).